With one small tweak, Britain's newest rail line will invoke Sir Walter Scott

It could cost £10m a mile, but the newly-sealed deal to rebuild a 35 mile stretch of the Borders railway will open up a lucrative market in heritage railway charters, and celebrate the literary giant Sir Walter Scott

A Scottish Borders train in 1965, four years before the line was closed by Beeching's cuts. Trains of this era could now run there again. Photograph: Robin Barbour
Frank Spaven

Campaigners who have fought for more than a decade to reopen a rail line closed during the infamous Beeching cuts in the 1960s have had more welcome news: the £300m project to reinstate part of the Borders line has been expanded, in a small but vital way.

It has taken some cajoling and diligent digging into market demand, but Network Rail and Transport Scotland have agreed to cater for the niche but lucrative market in historic railway excursions.

It has taken a tiny tweak of the scheme - the relatively low cost but crucial decision to extend the platforms at the Tweedbank terminus south of Galashiels – which will transform the line from a crucial but workaday commuter link to the central Borders into a major attraction for rail enthusiasts.

Now ScotRail, or whoever runs the franchise from 2015, when this new line is due to open, will have to work around the core train timetable, but this single decision unlocks a segment of the travel trade with worldwide appeal.

They're already sketching out the sales pitch and writing the brochures for the global ex-patriot tourism market: the 35 mile line is reinstating a healthy chunk of what used to be known as the Waverley line which until January 1969 ran to Carlisle, and it gives Borders tourism agencies the chance to market one of Scotland's literary giants, Sir Walter Scott.

The line runs from Waverley station in central Edinburgh, a station named after Scott's eponymous epic and which sits just beside the rocket-like Scott monument on Princes Street; it will now terminate at Tweedbank, a mile or so walk from Scott's grand manorial home at Abbotsford – his newly refurbished "conundrum castle".

So cue Waverley-themed excursions to the Borders, conducted by men with mutton chops, top hats and breeches. It seems obvious.

Apparently it took intense lobbying, and detailed market surveys by the Campaign for Borders Rail and the Waverley Route Trust to persuade the transport agencies to embrace the idea. They gave a nod of thanks to Keith Brown, the Scottish transport minister, who signed over the £294m contract to build the line to Network Rail on Tuesday.

As part of that agreement, Network Rail has extended the platforms at Tweedbank specially to cater for trains of up to 12 coaches long with historic engines at both ends, campaigners envisage 'classic' rolling stock with large picture windows hauled by diesel or steam locomotives hauling up to 500 passengers on day or weekend-long excursions from across Britain.

The single most popular destination was Edinburgh, and two thirds of the charters came from English towns and cities, bringing entirely new spend to the destination locations.

The CBR/WRT research concluded – conservatively – that around £500,000 of extra income could be flow into the Borders economy every year with charter train traffic and the Royal Scotsman.

The local economic benefits of special trains are particularly well understood in Fort William and Mallaig, where the steam-hauled Jacobite has been an outstanding success.

The new line will include 10 stations reconnecting the Borders town of Galashiels with Edinburgh – with seven new ones built south of Edinburgh, along 30 miles of new track in what will be the longest reinstatement of a line closed in the Beeching era.

Those stations include one not originally planned in the first scheme, a station at Stow north of Galashiels where one of only two of the original Victorian era station-master's houses still sits at the trackside. That too was reinstated after a vigorous campaign by locals.

Catherine Maxwell Stuart, chairwoman of Scottish Borders Tourism Partnership, agreed with Spaven about the decision to cater for charter trains:

The tourism industry in the Borders stands to gain enormously from the re-opening of the Borders Railway. The sector is already planning for the coming of the railway to ensure we can maximise the benefits for tourists and visitors to the Borders and continue to grow a sustainable tourism sector.

So for some enthusiasts, this conjures up evocative images of classic diesel locomotives, hauling carefully restored Pullman-type carriages, steadily climbing through the Moorfoots past the 600 year old tower of Borthwick castle. Mary Queen of Scots slept there. For others of a more pragmatic mind, this could help build the case for extending the line again, to Hawick just to the south, and eventually onto Carlisle – again.